I wanted to make this topic for awhile as supply is currently dry for many Pokemon cards. I’m curious what the hypothesis is on how cards will re-supply? Specifically vintage or anything out of print.
A quick history lesson, the previous 2020 boom was mainly wotc and select japanese promos, similar to the 90s. However, within less than a year, supply satiated demand. Today the relentless demand is dusting off the catchphrase, where is the cheaper option? This isn’t limited to wotc, or even a language, there are many English & Japanese cards that just aren’t being re-supplied.
In 2020, auction houses and other outlets didn’t fully embrace pokemon, where today there are entire departments whose job it is to locate cards. There are more feelers than ever in the market to draw out supply, yet its not happening, or at least happening fast enough. I’m curious what others think, is this it for some cards, are there still collections waiting to be walked out the closet?
Global recession or the hahbee cave-in. Estimated delivery date, 2027-2050.
It would take something drastic to make people lose faith in their investments after so many years of unprecedented $tonk. No-one wants to leave literal fortunes on the table by liquidating prematurely or without optimizing value. People “know what’s up,” there’s fewer and fewer schmucks to take advantage of.
My best guess is that supply will come from people (a) who are willing to sell at current market prices and (b) who cash out once the gainz aren’t as easy anymore. This is pretty similar to what happened in 2022-23 once the 2020-21 boom petered out.
Right now, I would bet that people who hold really strong and valuable cards are not selling unless they have a clear intention behind it. For people who have been collecting for awhile, their cost basis is relatively low, so why sell now unless you have a clear idea of what the money will do for you? I would think many long-term collectors are also waiting for things to settle down. When things 2x, 5x, etc over the span of a month, it really doesn’t make sense to sell. Once prices stabilize people are much more comfortable making decisions. I would bet that when prices stabilize, the growing certainty makes people more comfortable selling and we see an increase in supply.
However, long-term collectors are a minority these days, so many people are new to the hobby and have seen no downside from diamond handing everything. Back in 2022 we also saw a bunch of people who spent tons of money at ATHs quickly get discouraged once Pokemon wasn’t going to the moon anymore. They dumped everything at a loss and put it into other things. I remember one grating individual who stocked up on insane cards in 2020 and then dumped everything to go into crypto and NFTs when the line wasn’t going up.
I don’t think supply is gone forever. Cards will always be out there, but these things will likely cycle as we have seen before. Each cycle leads to less supply and more long-term holders as people get flushed out however.
I think I understand the question, but my initial thought is the YouTube videos I’ve seen where dudes just be havin whole basements full of booster box cases of different sets, so I would imagine from them. When we would get those though? Idk.
I think there has to be some mishap or something from someone big who says “I tried to sell my Pokemon cards and it was impossible” and then them saying that Pokemon isn’t a liquidable asset and then people trying to sell off their sealed so that they can put that money somewhere else. Almost like Anti-Hype.
The problem is with how many wealthy people there are who are able to spend bookoo bucks on cards, there are also people out there who would manipulate the prices to take advantage of those people.
As far as pokemon prices compared to say, sports cards, we’re not even close. So I’d say that we still have quite a ways to go until the bubble “pops”. With sports, government agencies had to get involved and it really impacted the hobby from then on. So I do wonder if something like that would have to happen. And then I wonder if/when that happens if we’ll see people offloading their sealed.
I think this cycle has seen an uptick in people leveraging their owned cards that have disproportionately appreciated to acquire cards that have historically been valued higher.
I mainly think of Gold Stars, Shinings, Crystals, and ex-era cards being exchanged for trophies and limited promos when I say this.
I know all categories of cards are up, but those that are reinvesting their profits seem to either buy more of the same in lower grades or trophies.
Otherwise they just seem to be cashing out.
I’m actually surprised how many Gold Stars are consistently available in high grades. Maybe not necessarily on eBay, Fanatics, or Goldin, etc.. but prices aside, there are regularly PSA 10 Gold Stars available via different sellers on Instagram. I see fewer mint commons to complete my sets than anything tbh.
(I do think we’ll reach a point where certain cards are locked away for extended periods. Like Fourth said, each cycle shrinks the supply little by little).
true, he’s almost there tho! PSA 2 would probably be cheaper @lemonofpromise is another good example, just chilling and collecting one of the most popular species in PSA 8s
To add a language-related perspective, for the first time ever last year, the local stores where I’m from in Central Europe started stocking Korean products heavily (alongside japanese which is slowly becoming more and more unobtainable here). I can find any and every mdoern set very easily and at extremely low prices (compared to JP or EN). Local FB trade groups also see more interest in KR products to rip.
As for vintage Korean - harder and harder to find. DP Booster Boxes, for example, are becoming impossible to find nowadays but are still around the 600-1500 USD mark. For a vintage booster box, with unique holos, this is still fairly good for many considering it is vintage. German, Spanish, Italian etc. have been very expensive for a very long time, so I wonder if some of the minor languages will follow too.
For this part of the question, I have a friend with what I would estimate at this point to be a million dollar raw closet collection, so I know at least one exists lol.
The thing is, the kind of person who a) immediately sleeves and binders their cards, never takes them to school or lets anyone touch them in an era when everyone else was running around with a rubber-banded stack in their pockets, b) keeps consistently collecting for years after it was no longer cool, and c) has that hoarder mentality to keep it untouched until now…
I think it tracks then that those same traits 30 years later make them the kind of person to just hold onto it. They have enough money, they don’t want to deal with the stress of grading and selling, they don’t want any kind of attention and so even if they have 0 interest in Pokémon anymore, they just keep it by default.
I would guess most of the incredible raw collections left are in this kind of limbo.
For the wider question, I think everyone knows at this point price drops will come from a drop in demand rather than an increase in supply. Pokémon is so optimized these days that even if someone somehow came into another gold star dogs supply situation it would be kept under wraps, trickled to market and profit maximized as long as possible.
This boom feels way more similar to 2023 japanese than 2020, except the cards being pumped actually make sense and orpia + buyback → mystery bags slot machines, jp card shops → vendors. Also japanese boxes are selling for 3x msrp again on release ever since tera.
It is however similar to 2020 in that random undergraded bulk is selling for hundreds, sometimes thousands, in 10s.
I’m banking on resupply for the rarest stuff coming from people who can’t afford to hold and demand wavering for whatever reason leading to less free money to blow from flipping modern/random bulk. When you can trade for a 2000 dollar card , even if it used to be 500 half a year ago, after hitting on pokemon center queue 3x and getting 6 ascended etbs, it feels less stupid. Or maybe they will ban the unregulated gambling and all the mystery bag slabs will suddenly be liquidated.
PSA 8s all the way! My corocoro mew psa 8 is absolutely mint, maybe a bit offcenter, got it for $300. i’ve also recently gone below a 0$ net cost for my collection, mainly due to selling stuff I’m not as passionate about collecting, as well as Mew dupes. I was lucky to have been collecting other non-Mew cards that happened to go up a ton during this boom, which I sold for more Mews, especially MP binder copies with a nice front. I’ve had to lower my condition standards for some of the more expensive Mews, but they’re still there. Also @lyleberr knows this trick too, but you can definitely pick up NM-M copies of cards on auctions, usually CGC 9s or below that sell for cheaper than raw NM, most recent example for me being a mint Mewtwo Mew SM 191 that was a cgc 6.5.
Also another important one for me: not comparing myself to other collectors. I’m happy only collecting Mews in Eng/JP, even tho some might say it’s not a “true” masterset. My collection is my collection, and it makes me happy and that’s all that matters.
I’m not sure I would call the situation we’re in now a cycle. There is a fundamental shift happening, and an influx of money with it. We are way past the typical hype phase.
People are not collecting pokemon cards anymore. They are collecting graded pokemon cards and specifically 10s. They buy the grade more than the card. That makes sense if you view them as a financial asset.
The vast majority of pokemon cards are not scarce. It takes the PSA10 label to turn them into a low pop enough asset that engenders value.
As for the binder of raw cards sitting in the dark, waiting to get 10s I believe that it is a delusion and don’t see any significant resupply coming from that source
Prices going up only shake loose hands, it will take a loss of faith in the future of the franchise for people to give up on their cards, or most likely just boredom and disinterest
But I don’t see any of these scenarios coming. I guess I need to work on my imagination more.
I cope with the situation by buying cute cards. Cute cards are cheap because no one takes them seriously.
I definitely think there are still a lot of cards sitting in the binders of people who haven’t thought twice about Pokemon since the late ’90s and early 2000s, even through the recent hype cycles.
